The hidden potential of Semi Armor Piercing(SAP)

[anonym_ziPQbxoJkOE7]

Greetings, captains! As the title says, this topic is about the brand new Semi Armor Piercing(SAP) Shells that got recently introduced to the game with the Italian cruisers.

 

So i got personal missions for Montecuccoli and Trento. After completing the missions, and testing them out i must say this Semi Armor Piercing is pretty interesting. It seems to be the best shell type of choice at near max range against broadside targets. When it penetrates the deck armor of ships, it can deal massive damage.

 

A salvo of SAP dealing almost 9k to a New Mexico at near maximum range

 

This behaviour of the Semi Armor Piercing shells will make Italian cruisers very effective at kiting, and quite dangerous, counting if you can lead your shots properly. Their high shell arc will make leading targets difficult, but if you're familiar with cruisers with high firing arcs such as the Dallas, you will adjust to these cruisers fast.

It also is the best choice against some light cruisers, if they're slightly angled, if you cannot guaranteedly citadel them, and DDs of course. But unlike HE, it has a tendency to ricochet on sharp angles.

Furthermore, Italian ships will not be able to set ships on fire AT ALL, since the SAP cannot set fires. For those of you who own some of the older premium Italian cruisers, don't worry. Those will keep their regular AP and HE shells accordingly

 

This is my very short analysis of the new Semi Armor Piercing(SAP) shells. I'd like to hear your opinions too!

 

Good luck, and fair seas! 

[DFens_666]

You dont need to be at range, you only need a BB without any actual Armor. And NM is one of those.

NM has no armor except at the belt, every other place is free farm for HE/SAP.

[ollonborre]

While I appreciate the effort and enthusiasm, I am not impressed with SAP. Light cruiser SAP is not overly impressive, and while I have not played the 203 mm cruisers I assume it is more of the same.

 

Having an AP round as a sort of makeshift HE brings every disadvantage of an AP shell (bounces, shatters) and not many of the advantages (fires, damage regardless of angling if the plate is thin enough).

 

When it comes to long range sniping or kiting I still argue that the IJN for example are far superiour in that role, with better arcs, great HE and more torps to boot.

 

The Italian ships themselves I kinda like, I like the design, torps are ok ish, the smoke generator has potential (cooldown is bleh though) and they seem to handle atleast average.

[anonym_ziPQbxoJkOE7]

3 minutes ago, DFens_666 said:

You dont need to be at range, you only need a BB without any actual Armor. And NM is one of those.

NM has no armor except at the belt, every other place is free farm for HE/SAP.

I dealt 4-6k per SAP salvo against a Scharnhorst too if that means anything.

I didn't try SAP at closer ranges, will try it later. It just seems like to me that SAP performs better overall than standard AP most of the time

[KapteinSabeltann]

I allready have SAP on all my light cruisers. It's called IFHE but it also sets fires. You should try it it's quite good. But then again WG have decided IFHE must go, completely forgetting why they added it in the first place. My italian cruiser friend - by now we are running out of gimmics and the Italian cruisers are the last in an ever increasing long line of ships suffering from that. The good news is - it's a new line so they want ppl to buy it so the might fix it. Try plaing german ships - they should come with a camo saying PWND BY POWERCREEP.

[Yamato942]

Its good shells until you meet somebody who know to angle enough, but if broadside enemy its awsome shells but then Ap is better anyways.

[DFens_666]

16 minutes ago, DEADSNAKE2 said:

I dealt 4-6k per SAP salvo against a Scharnhorst too if that means anything.

I didn't try SAP at closer ranges, will try it later. It just seems like to me that SAP performs better overall than standard AP most of the time

 

SAP is always better, as long as you cant citadel the enemy or if AP can get pens while SAP would get shatters, because SAP deals more damage than AP.

And its quit clear how much penetration SAP has, while AP penetrations depends at what distance you shoot at.

- Against DDs: Use SAP

- Against Cruisers: If you can citadel them, use AP, otherwise use SAP

- I guess against BBs you can shoot 95% SAP. Alltho im not sure if Venezia can Citadel f.e. Yamato at close range. AP vs BBs is always situational, and depends if you can get penetrations. So AP gets more situational for Italian CAs, because it only beats SAP when SAP shatters (german BB upper belt armor f.e., but german BBs have juicy superstructure so...)

[250swb]

27 minutes ago, DEADSNAKE2 said:

I dealt 4-6k per SAP salvo against a Scharnhorst too if that means anything.

I didn't try SAP at closer ranges, will try it later. It just seems like to me that SAP performs better overall than standard AP most of the time

Generally speaking it's no good doing 4-6k if inbetween reloading the enemy can do more than that to you. SAP is a very interesting idea, it's just that the ship using it has more cons than pros.

[SaintGordon]

I just had my first two Games in Zara.

The SAP ist just a bit underwhelming.

 

So where was the point fot SAP?

No BBs moarning about fires?

SAP is very depending on situation, and if you Target does not want to cooperate youre screwed.

No swithcing to HE, AP will be even more pointless in nose aherd enemys.

 

Itanlian ships will be fun...

 

[Starchy_Tuber]

16 minutes ago, SaintGordon said:

Itanlian ships will be fun...

Well, to be fair, they had to be worse than the existing Italian Premium cruisers, so the bar was set pretty low....

I mean, if they were good, the premium folks would cry foul... hence.....

[Captain_Newman]

Yes, you can sometimes get these juicy salvos on bb's. The problem is consistency, or lack thereof. If all enemy dd's die in the first few min, you might struggle hard to deal any meaningful amounts of damage in an italian cruiser; yes, you can do something vs. cruisers, and perhaps you can damage some bb's whose superstructures aren't yet saturated, but the point is, in this situation literally nothing you do couldn't be better accomplished in another cruiser,  which can get fires, if not has really high dpm, smoke/radar and very good torps (mino), offers team utility in the form of radar, hydro and AA, etc.

 

Italian Cruisers - they're not impossible to do well in, but I find you have to put in twice the effort for maybe half the rewards in comparison to other cruisers, and this is largely due to the inconsistency of SAP on anything but dd's. I own the Genova, Monte, Trento and Zara so far. I find both the t5 cruisers complete garbage. I haven't played the Trento much but what I see hasn't wowed me, Zara can perform ok in some situations, but there's literally no situation in which I wouldn't rather be in a Duca d'Aosta than any of the ships I mentioned above.

[M4R4Z]

For what I could see, playing all currently available Italian cruisers, SAP can do some consistent damage to BBs superstructures, except:

- German low tier BBs (Kaiser, Bayern)

- all Soviet BBs (because reasons)

 

This is damage that cannot be fully repaired (different from HE damage, that can be 100% repaired). So, at each salvo your are chipping a little amount of HPs that cannot be repaired.

 

Anyway, what is missing against BBs is the "fear effect" due to fires: if you set 2 or 3 fires on a pushing BBs, she will stop pushing and retreat for repairing. This is missing for SAP damage.

[DFens_666]

24 minutes ago, M4R4Z said:

This is damage that cannot be fully repaired (different from HE damage, that can be 100% repaired). So, at each salvo your are chipping a little amount of HPs that cannot be repaired.

 

HE and SAP alpha damage can be repaired to the same amount. Only fires (and floods/ramming, otherwise someone will cry again ~~) can be healed to 100%

[M4R4Z]

1 hour ago, DFens_666 said:

 

HE and SAP alpha damage can be repaired to the same amount. Only fires (and floods/ramming, otherwise someone will cry again ~~) can be healed to 100%

Of course, I meant fire damage caused by HE.

[SaintGordon]

To hit a bow tanking ships superstructure ist nost that easy.

and hitting it constantlsy even more.

The reload is a joke.

 

Italin cruisers are weak compared to other cruiser line.

 

And in the same situation they introduce the most powerfull HE spammer in the game, a Sovjet of course.

 

Interesting design choice...

[Captain_Newman]

3 minutes ago, SaintGordon said:

To hit a bow tanking ships superstructure ist nost that easy.

and hitting it constantlsy even more.

The reload is a joke.

 

Italin cruisers are weak compared to other cruiser line.

 

And in the same situation they introduce the most powerfull HE spammer in the game, a Sovjet of course.

 

Interesting design choice...

Soviet phaser turrets are required to spread Balans more efficiently to weak and decadent western ships.

[SaintGordon]

Da, Towarischtsch !

[HaachamaShipping]

2 hours ago, M4R4Z said:

Of course, I meant fire damage caused by HE.

Too bad then that most ships with HE have a better dpm to farm superstructure and while fire damage is 100% repairable, it still is more lethal than the joke you get from full pens on saturated superstructure, where you'd be better off had it been an overpen.

 

Also, SAP still can potentially bounce off angled superstructure, as 203 mm is no auto-overmatch on 19 mm plating, so if you hit something that is angled enough, you may just get nothing.

[Captain_Newman]

45 minutes ago, Sleepy_Bunny said:

Also, SAP still can potentially bounce off angled superstructure, as 203 mm is no auto-overmatch on 19 mm plating, so if you hit something that is angled enough, you may just get nothing.

 

...and in reality that has players maneuver and angle constantly, this will happen frequently. There will be very few battles in which SAP would have been an overall better choice than just spamming HE exclusively. Short of nuking DD's vs. which HE is already very good against, anyway. Yes, SAP does produce the occasional meaty salvo. So does everything else, tbh. I'll see if Venezia's silly amount of guns changes the equation somewhat - it kind of sounds like it will be able to one shot most DD's with a well aimed salvo...

[lovelacebeer]

I have found the SAP to be quite effective especially against light cruisers and destroyers, at range I found the Zara SAP did a lovely job against battleship superstructures enough to make most give up on their intended push.

[illy]

41 minutes ago, lovelacebeer said:

I have found the SAP to be quite effective especially against light cruisers and destroyers, at range I found the Zara SAP did a lovely job against battleship superstructures enough to make most give up on their intended push.

i found the Zara much better than the Trento for SAP, it can be very accurate which helps roll some good dmg numbers, still love torping ppl in it though...being hit by those slow torps is  a bit embarrassing 

[Taliesn]

Amalfi is horrendous at tier VIII, and Monte is, well, a tier V cruiser. Can't really remember the others so I can't compare her.

 

Early doors but I'm enjoying the Trento (in as much as you can enjoy any ship in this line) 

 

Reload is just a big letdown.

[Shadeshots]

Entire line thus far is pure garbage...

[LordTareq]

The guns are just meh. Just compare the Amalfi to the Hipper which is I think considered a mediocre cruiser itself. Amalfi gets 1 more gun, but significantly slower reload, less range, and the SAP damage is actually far lower than the Hipper’s AP. Hipper also has HE and can bowtank all but the largest guns, and has better AA.

For all that the Amalfi gets more useable torpedoes, better speed and the smoke gimmick. Sounds like a rough deal to me.

[Redcap375]

1 hour ago, LordTareq said:

The guns are just meh. Just compare the Amalfi to the Hipper which is I think considered a mediocre cruiser itself. Amalfi gets 1 more gun, but significantly slower reload, less range, and the SAP damage is actually far lower than the Hipper’s AP. Hipper also has HE and can bowtank all but the largest guns, and has better AA.

For all that the Amalfi gets more useable torpedoes, better speed and the smoke gimmick. Sounds like a rough deal to me.

 

This ^^

 

and the Hipper is the most mediocre cruiser there is (I still like it)

 

Not ONE person in out clan likes these cruisers.  A few can stand them, but that's about it.